Cloud Computing v1: What is the Cloud?

In its simplest form, the Cloud simply means storing Data and accessing computers over the Internet. To a larger extent, the Cloud isn't just storage, it's compute, it's artificial intelligence, it's machine learning, it's a whole bunch of different types of computing or services, and essentially it's just being done on somebody else's server, and the way you are able to interact with it is via your internet connection. So think as the Cloud as somebody else's computer that you're using temporarily.

The Cloud and its Origin

The terms dates back to the '60s, to the original ARPANET project when they were building and architecting the Internet. The Cloud symbol was used on their flowcharts. Whenever they would draw the Internet on the flowchart, they would draw a little cloud. And the idea being there that any computer that's connected to the Internet has access to that pool of computing power and data.

And so if you go back to the late 1980s or early 1990s, the way people would install software on their computer was using floppy disks. So you put the disk in, you'd go into the disk and you'd install it locally on your hard drive.

You can think of it like a cloud, right? Its form is vague, its size is vague, its shape changes and the exact makeup of it doesn't really matter to you from the outside. You just care that you can connect into the Internet and access its resources.

So a good analogy here is like Electricity. So you can generate your own electricity. You could buy a generator, you could run it in your house, but it's a relatively expensive investment up front. You've gotta buy that hardware, you've got to keep it running, you've got ongoing maintenance of your generator, all for you to generate electricity to run your house. But if there's enough people around you all wanting access to electricity, it kinda makes sense to share that generation with everyone else. So outsource the setup and running of the generation of the electricity to someone else, like an energy company, right? And then anyone who needs electricity around you, can just tap into it on demand and they can just pay for what they use. It allows the energy company to focus on delivering energy, producing energy in a really efficient, fast way and build economies of scale. And it allows the consumer of that energy to focus on other things.

So running your own computers and service is a lot like owning and operating a generator. Why would you wanna do it when someone else can do it for you, do it more efficiently and you can just use it on tap. You can use your computing capacity, compute power, data storage on tap.

Who are the different Cloud vendors?

The big ones are are people like Amazon, by far the biggest. They actually make up around 90% of the Public Cloud compute. They have the vast majority of the world's Cloud computing capacity and the majority of the revenue and the business.

They're followed closely by Microsoft Azure. They actually make up the next 5%. They're winning a lot of Fortune 500 companies. A lot of corporate clients and they have been doing a great job at playing to their base and to the companies that are already using Microsoft, making it an easy transition path to the Cloud.

And then the final 5% roughly is Google, IBM, Alibaba etc. Google Cloud is doing very well in the Big Data, AI Space, Machine and Deep Learning. It is making a smart play into the future there.

Content: Intro to Cloud Computing Course by Cloud Guru

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